


fault lines

by jemmasimmmons



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Nightmares, Post 3x10, meaningful conversations in the middle of the night is a recurring motif with these two, mentions of Will Daniels - Freeform, potential triggers for PTSD implication
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2016-02-06
Packaged: 2018-05-18 15:48:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5933938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jemmasimmmons/pseuds/jemmasimmmons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She twisted her head upwards and felt herself suck in a breath when she saw how he was looking at her. His eyes were soft, and while they might have been ringed with sleep, they were still filled with the gentlest love Jemma had ever seen.</p><p>She squeezed lightly at his hand and asked again. </p><p>‘Dance with me?’"</p><p>Post 3x10. When Jemma decides to start running from her nightmares, Fitz runs with her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	fault lines

**Author's Note:**

> This completely spiralled from a single word prompt I was given on tumblr from my friend Fanni, who asked me to write Fitzsimmons and the word "tarantism", and an extra word of my choice. It was supposed to be a drabble but, as is usually the case with me, ended up being an awful lot longer.
> 
> My hopes for season 3b are fairly high at the moment! I am incredibly hopeful that at least some aspects of Jemma's guilt and trama will get discussed, maybe even get an attempt at resolve. Given the hints we've been given, I like to think my hopes are well founded, but we'll see.
> 
> I hope you enjoy this!
> 
> (Oh, and my apologies if the meagre slither of geology I put in here is inaccurate. I'm a history student, it's not my forte and I did the best I could to use it the way I wanted to.)

_  
_

 

_Ayurnamat - The philosophy that there is no point in worrying about events that cannot be changed._

_  
_

_Tarantism - The urge to overcome melancholy by dancing._

 

 

 

On the wall of Jemma’s bunk there was a miniature whiteboard.

It was about the size of an A4 sheet of paper, with cold chrome boarders and slots at either side of the frame for two whiteboard markers to clip into, ready to be pulled off to write as needs be.

As far as Jemma was aware, each of the bunks in the Playground had an identical whiteboard mounted on the wall opposite the bed, but each of her teammates seemed to have a different use for their own. Daisy used hers to doodle, favouring brightly coloured erasable markers over the regulation blue and black ones provided for them. Fitz’s board was a mess of schematics and hastily scribbled notes, his handwriting getting progressively worse the further down the board he wrote. Bobbi had decided to forego the markers completely – instead, she used miniature magnets to pin up photographs on her board, neatly arranging them like tetris pieces so not even a slither of white plastic showed through.

Jemma’s board, ever since her first night at the Playground, had always been dedicated to numbers.

At first, she had counted the days, nine of them and the longest of her life. After that, the numbers had turned into calculations, as she searched for the perfect formula that would be able to fix what had been broken. It was only when she found that the most necessary solution was to remove herself from the equation that Jemma’s numbers became a lonely and forlorn countdown.

After coming back from Hydra the board became a tally chart of days she made it through working in the lab without wanting to cry, a pitiful record of limited success. On her return from the alien planet, Jemma found that someone else had been using her board in her absence. The number ‘196’ had been written in the centre of the board in defiant red marker and it took her a long time to figure out that that was how many days she’d been gone.

She’d kept the number up, as a painful reminder of what she had done and the lengths that had been gone to in order to bring her home. Jemma wiped the number off her board the morning after the team’s second return from Gloucestershire, replacing it instead with a solid zero, a number she intended to change with every night she managed to sleep through to her alarm without being woken by nightmares.

Three months afterwards, Jemma was as of yet to change that number from zero to one.

 

 

 

The dream woke her up with a horrible scream of wind by her ears, and cold sand under her fingers, and a searing pain in her middle that felt so real Jemma’s first conscious thought was that she was going to be sick.

She sat up bolt upright in her bed and squeezed her eyes shut, taking short, shallow breaths to try and quell the nausea rising in her throat. Her ears were buzzing, and she took a moment to be still, waiting for the sounds of the screams from her dream to fade, before she opened her eyes and flicked on her bedside lamp.

The time on her watch read 4:07am and Jemma muffled a groan with her sleeve as she realised she had been asleep for less than four hours. Over the past three months, her body had become stubbornly resistant to sleep, almost as if it thought that if it prevented her from sleeping then it could protect her from her nightmares.

Which, Jemma thought wearily, was ridiculous.

She knew as well as anyone that, if they tried hard enough, your worst nightmares could follow you into broad daylight.

Shuffling backwards, Jemma reached onto her bedside cabinet for the glass of water she kept there, eager for something to wash away the rough ache on the back of her throat. As she picked up the glass, her fingers brushed against the little bottle of sleeping pills Lincoln had given her and she let out a quiet hiss of disdain. The pills worked, and perfectly so, but for all the anxiety they took away by sending her to sleep sooner they made up for it by making it harder for her to wake herself once she was in a nightmare.

The one and only night she had taken them it had been her own screams that had woken her, in a voice that had sounded so far removed from her own that Jemma had stumbled out of bed and was opening her bunk door in search of who was screaming before she realised it had been her. She had sunk to the floor and crouched there, shivering, until she heard May pad down the corridor at 5am and knew it was safe to get up.

After that night, the tiny bottle of pills remained unopened. Jemma knew that despite every precaution the walls of the base were not wholly soundproof and she felt a steely determination to not subject her teammates to having to listen to sounds of her dreaming every night. When they were each suffering from their own pain, what right did she have to make them share hers too?

Sighing, Jemma slid her feet around and lifted herself out of bed. There was no point in trying to go back to sleep, not when her head was still spinning and her heart was still racing with the memory of the nightmare. But at this point, Jemma was long past caring about trying to establish a regular sleep cycle again.

If sleep was so insistent on evading her, then maybe _she_ would try evading _sleep_.

It was a childish way of thinking, but, Jemma thought as she pushed open the door of her bunk, maybe she had earned the right to be a little childish in this.

After everything she had gone through, she could only hope the universe would forgive her for it.

 

 

 

The base was never silent, not even at night when all of its inhabitants were asleep (or, at least, were supposed to be). As Jemma walked down the long corridors, her fingers trailing listlessly down the bricked walls, she could hear the whirs of machines and lab equipment underneath the constant hum of the fluorescent lights above her head. The machines were working on DNA tracking, trying to pinpoint the locations of unsuspecting inhumans before something, or some _one_ , else did.

It was reassuring, in a way, to know that their work never stopped, even when they were sleeping. No matter what she and her team were doing, there was always something on the Playground still ready and willing to try and protect the world. On the other hand, it felt vaguely depressing, knowing that no matter what they did while they were awake it was still never quite enough.

 _But we’re trying_ , Jemma thought. _We’re always trying_.

Without really noticing, her feet had walked her to the mess hall and Jemma came to a halt when she realised that a light was coming from inside. A cold fist closed over her heart and, for a brief moment, her fingers itched for a missing, splintered shiv.

It was only when she took a single step further inside that Jemma realised that the hazy blue light was coming from the television, and the racing-car video game that was being played on it by the lone figure sitting on the couch with his back to her.

‘Fitz?’

At the sound of her voice, he jumped, and Jemma flinched as she realised she could, and _should_ , have been softer.

‘I’m sorry,’ she began. ‘I didn’t want to scare you.’

‘No! No, it’s okay. You didn’t.’ Fitz offered her a tired smile as he twisted on the sofa to face her. ‘I was just surprised. Couldn’t sleep?’

‘I was asleep earlier,’ Jemma admitted, walking a little further towards him. ‘But then I…’ She trailed off, unwilling to finish, and shook her head. ‘You couldn’t either?’

‘No. Not tonight.’ Fitz gestured towards the car race still showing on the screen. ‘Mack, uh, lent me the logins for his games. Every time I can’t sleep, I can come down here to try and beat his high scores.’

‘Oh.’

A nasty, unwelcome bitterness rose in Jemma’s throat as she realised that once again it had been Mack who had found a way to help her best friend when she herself couldn’t. The bitterness was quickly replaced by guilt, guilt that she should feel quite so upset about it.

Fitz glanced up at her quickly, his eyes flicking over her pained expression before he looked back to his game.

‘I’ve been doing it for months now,’ he said easily, with only the faintest tremor in his voice. ‘Mack first gave me the login just after you got taken by the monolith. Being able to do this, uh, really helped while you were… _there_.’

‘Ah.’ Jemma nodded, and felt some of the bitterness ebb away from her, leaving behind only the guilt. ‘I see.’

Carefully, she continued to walk towards his sofa, her hands clenched into light fists, and came to a stop by the armrest. She peered towards the screen.

‘Are you close? To beating his high scores?’

Fitz snorted. ‘Jemma, please. _He’s_ still trying to beat the new high score _I_ set eight months ago.’

The pride in his voice is enough to make the corners of Jemma’s mouth tilt upwards.

 _Maybe we’re all allowed to be childish every now and then_.

After a few moments, Fitz cleared his throat.

‘You know, you can sit down. If you want.’

‘Oh.’ Suddenly, Jemma was aware of how long she had been standing, or hovering, really, at his elbow. ‘No, I’d…I’d rather stand. Thank you.’

The nightmare had made her restless, she realised, and it had brought back the unforgettable fear of being chased. Of being hunted. If she sat down, it would only make it easier for the nightmares to catch up with her.

‘In fact,’ she continued, a little shakily. ‘I think I’d rather walk for a bit, if that’s alright.’

‘Oh…yeah. Yeah, ‘course it is.’

Fitz tapped at a few buttons on his controller and reached for the television remote. Jemma felt a pang in the centre of her chest when she realised what he was doing.

‘Fitz, I didn’t mean that you had to come with me.’

‘I know you didn’t.’ He stood up, arched his back, then stuck his hands into the pockets of his pyjama trousers. ‘But I want to. If that’s okay, of course.’

For a moment, Jemma stared at him as he stood in front of her, half of his face illuminated by the light of the television. She was struck by how deep and how purple the rings were under his eyes, and how tired he looked despite his relaxed posture.

Apparently she wasn’t the only one running from her nightmares.

‘Of course.’ She nodded, and managed a small smile. ‘Of course it’s okay.’

 

 

 

They walked the halls of the Playground side-by-side, with a not-uncomfortable silence hanging in the air between them.

Over the past year, Jemma had gotten used to silence when she was with Fitz. At first she had resisted the quiet, forever struggling to fill the gaps he left in their usual vigorous back and forth and feeling all the more helpless every time she had to answer her own question. For the long, painful months after the pod incident, Jemma had felt alone in her own head for the first time in ten years and it had terrified her.

Now though, the quiet that fell between them when they were alone together no longer scared her. In fact, there was almost a reassurance in the silence that they no longer needed to fill every second they spent together with words, afraid that they would lose each other if they ever stopped speaking. After everything that had happened, they both now knew that it would take a lot more than the occasional silence to tear them apart once more.

Fitz almost seemed to use the silence between them as an extra layer of protection, as if he could wrap her up in it like an abundance of cotton wool, in order to protect her from the words he knew could cut her like knives, reopening old scars and creating new wounds. Jemma couldn’t berate him for that. How could she, when she was doing the exact same thing?

They were just passing the large glass windows to the lab when Jemma felt the itch. She reached out and let her fingers brush ever so slightly against Fitz’s arm. The hairs on his forearm stiffened, but he didn’t say anything. Instead, he wordlessly slid his arm out of his pocket and opened up his hand for her, an invitation.

Jemma accepted it, placing her palm in his and linking their fingers together. The simplicity of the gesture surprised her, and she realised with a start that the last time she had held his hand had been several long months ago, at a restaurant filled with candlelight.

The sharp memory of that night brought tears springing to her eyes and Jemma blinked furiously, staring past the windows to the lab beyond to distract her. The sight of the clean white surfaces and green tiles reminded her of a very different walk she had taken with Fitz holding her hand, and the very different person it had felt like she had been then.

‘It’s been quite a while,’ Fitz said, jogging her out of her memories with a voice gruff from disuse. ‘Since you’ve been back in the lab full time.’

Jemma nodded.

‘Seven weeks, four days.’

(Not that she’d been counting or anything.)

No one had expected her to go back to work straight after their return from Gloucestershire, and so she hadn’t. What had happened at the Hydra camp, what she had allowed Dr Gardner to do and the crushing knowledge of what had happened to Will had left her numb, and for a few blind days afterwards Jemma had felt as lost and as vulnerable as if she’d been pulled from the portal all over again.

It had been a full week before Bobbi had hesitantly approached her to ask for some help in the lab, because, truth be told, they really were too short on competent staff to carry out what needed to be done. Secretly, Jemma had been immensely relieved to have this reassurance that she was still needed, still _wanted_ even, in SHIELD in spite of everything, but she had seen the guilt flicker in her friend’s face for having to ask her back to work so soon. Because of this, she made sure not to overstay her welcome and agreed to Fitz’s suggestion of half-days in the lab to ease her back into work. She carried out tests and oversaw diagnosis checks in the morning before retreating to her bunk in the afternoon.

She wasn’t exactly sure what the others thought she did for the long, lonely hours she spent alone. Certainly, she knew better than to tempt the nightmares by sleeping in the daylight, regardless of how tired she was. Mostly, Jemma spent her time off staring at the walls around her and thinking about everything that had been lost to bring her there.

When the reluctant suggestion came up that she returned to the lab full time, she had agreed without hesitation.

‘Are you happy to be back in the lab?’ Fitz asked her, with a quick glance in her direction. ‘I don’t think I ever really asked you that. Before it happened, or after.’

They had walked a few more steps before Jemma gave him her answer.

‘It’s better that I’m back,’ she said decidedly.

Fitz gave a quiet huff. ‘That wasn’t really what I asked, Jemma.’

‘Well, I’m certainly happier in the lab than I would ever be if I were still stuck on another planet,’ she replied as airily as she could, knowing the weight the words held. ‘And as for the other stuff…I’m working on it.’

Next to her, she felt Fitz tense ever so slightly.

‘ _What_ other stuff?’

Jemma winced at the strained note in his voice, knowing that the conversation could no longer be avoided.

She had tried to ignore the niggling feeling at the back of her mind, the one that was growing stronger with every day she spent back in the lab, but it was getting too hard. And besides, she’d promised herself long ago that she owed it to him to always be honest.

‘I’m…finding it a little hard to find my place again.’

‘What do you mean, ‘find your place again’? Your place is right where it’s always been, as co-head of the Science Department with me. Nothing’s changed, Jemma.’

Fitz was frowning and his free hand had balled into a fist, as if he intended to physically fight anyone who dared to contradict him. It made Jemma feel tears burn at the back of her throat again.

‘You kept my desk exactly the same, Fitz,’ she said softly. ‘You made sure not a post-it note was moved, and I’m grateful to you for that, I truly am. But you couldn’t do the same for everything else, and I couldn’t have expected you to.’

‘Is this about the chemical cupboard?’ His grip on her hand tightened. ‘Because I _told_ them you liked the compounds organised alphabetically and not by atomic number. I _knew_ it would just upset you when you got back but…’

‘It’s not about the chemical cupboard,’ Jemma assured him. ‘Or at least, it’s not just that. But, Fitz…I don’t know where to find the things I need in my own lab anymore. I don’t know the names, let alone the qualifications, of the people I’m supposed to be working with. When someone asks me about a case SHIELD worked on months ago, I can’t give them an answer because I don’t remember it, because _I wasn’t here_!’

She choked back a sob before continuing, her voice a little quieter this time. ‘And sometimes… being around so many people with so much noise all the time and so much I need to take in…well, sometimes all these things can still feel rather overwhelming for me.’

Fitz whirled around to face her, worry clouding his face.

‘You didn’t have to go back,’ he insisted, the ferocity in his voice making Jemma’s heart flip over in her chest. ‘If you weren’t ready, you could have told me and I’d have said something. We can take you back down to half-days tomorrow if you want…’

Jemma was already shaking her head. ‘But that just feels so wrong, Fitz! I can’t keep on sitting around and doing nothing, not when I could be in the lab with you, and Bobbi and the others. Not when there are so many people who need our help. It’s just _wrong_.’

Fitz gave a short, bitter laugh. ‘There is a difference, you know, Jemma, between selfishness and self-preservation.’

‘I know there is. And me choosing not to help save lives just because I don’t know whether I want to be in the lab yet _is_ selfish!’

Jemma’s words fell short as she realised how pained Fitz’s expression had become and she found herself wishing she could take back everything she’d said over the past five minutes just so he wouldn’t have to look like that.

‘Don’t you ever think,’ he said shakily, ‘that sometimes we can allow ourselves to be a little bit selfish?’

Jemma blinked, swallowing back her tears down a throat that felt like sandpaper. The ache at the base of her heart, an ache that had been there so long she had learnt just to carry it, grew a little heavier.

‘I _have_ been selfish, Fitz,’ she admitted. ‘Horribly so. I was selfish when I let Dr Gardner out, just because I was scared and I wanted to feel safer. I was selfish when I left Will behind on that planet and I ran for the flare, all because I wanted-‘

 _You_.

 _Because I wanted you_.

Fitz’s jaw was set tight and his free hand kept clenching and unclenching into a fist. ‘Nobody blames you,’ he said. ‘Nobody blames you for what happened at all.’

‘But _I_ blame me!’ The base of Jemma’s neck where it joined her shoulders ached, and all of a sudden she felt horribly tired. ‘So many people have gotten hurt, Fitz, all because of what I decided to do and…and I don’t…’ She took a deep shuddering breath and tried to stop her bottom lip from trembling. ‘I don’t know how I can ever forgive myself for it.’

Fitz heaved a heavy sigh and Jemma felt his thumb begin to rub in small comforting circles over the back of her hand.

‘If it helps,’ he said gruffly. ‘You’re not the only one who thinks they’ve behaved selfishly during those few months.’

Jemma’s head shot upwards and she frowned furiously as she tried to make sense of his words.

‘No.’ she shook her head. ‘No, Fitz, you were never selfish. I can’t see how you could possibly think…’

If anything, in her eyes he’d always been the direct opposite. From the moment he’d pulled her back out of the portal, Fitz had been tireless in putting her needs before his own. He had helped her walk to the beat of the earth’s gravitational force again, worked relentlessly to find them a way back to Will and then to top it all off, he had given himself up to Hydra and an unknown planet in order to keep her safe. Jemma couldn’t see how he could ever think of himself as anything other than self _less,_ and she certainly didn’t know how she could ever show him how much all he had done meant to her.

Fitz gave a soft snort, and rubbed the base of his palm into his eye.

‘I did something that put a whole lot of people in a whole lot of danger – and, actually, I did it twice – because there was something that I wanted,’ he said, glancing down at her. ‘So, by your own definition, yeah, I acted selfishly.’

With a start, Jemma realised he was talking about opening the portal, and beyond that he was talking about her. By cracking open the monolith the first time, their entire team had been endangered and by his agreeing to see Hydra through the portal the second time, he had opened up the whole world to the risk of an inhuman who could bring them only death. Both of those times, Fitz had made the choice to open the door to Maveth because he had wanted to keep her safe.

Her head spun: he had been selfish for her, while she had been selfish for him.

It seemed that the one thing they were both capable of being selfish for was each other.

‘Would you go back?’ Jemma whispered, her voice hoarse. ‘If you could, would you go back and do it all again? Make a different choice?’

The hazy blue light from the lab flickered uncertainly over Fitz’s face, creating shadows under his eyes as he frowned. When he spoke, his words were hesitant, as if he was crafting them carefully in his mind before he spoke them.

‘In the first few weeks after the portal took you, I was furious. I took it out on everyone else, I know that, but mostly I was angry with myself. I was angry that I’d left you alone with the monolith, I was angry that I’d waited until it was too late to talk to you, and I was angry about the way that I’d been treating you ever since we got back from San Juan.’

Jemma was just about to break in, to argue that he had nothing to be sorry for, when she noticed the look of intense concentration on Fitz’s face and decided it was best not to. Instead, she swallowed her words and gave his hand a light squeeze in encouragement.

‘I kept thinking,’ Fitz continued shakily, ‘about what I’d done, and what I _hadn’t_ done. I couldn’t stop wondering about what might have happened if I’d made a different choice, and I spent hours thinking about what I would change if I could go back in time and do it all again. Almost two months had gone by before I realised that the more time I spent worrying about what I hadn’t done was more time that I wasn’t spending trying to get you back.’

He had spoken so little to her about what he had done all the time she’d been fighting for survival on an alien planet, Jemma realised. Bobbi and Daisy had thrown out the occasional pointed remark about how relentless he had been in his pursuit of knowledge about what might have happened to her, and she’d simply assumed that he’d kept quiet out of modesty. But now, she couldn’t help but wonder if he hadn’t talked about it because there was something he was ashamed of.

‘After that, I realised that there was no point in wishing I could go back. I couldn’t change anything, and worrying about what I _could_ have done wasn’t going to help you. Past me couldn’t save you, but future me still stood a chance.’ Fitz fell quiet for a moment, and then sighed. ‘You can’t spend your life worrying about what happened in the past. Because if you do, then all that means is you’re not looking forwards.’

Jemma thought about this as Fitz took the chance to get his breath back, silence descended around the two of them again.

Fitz’s words had struck her alarmingly close to the bone; in fact they had been almost an exact mirror of Jemma’s thoughts in the weeks following the pod incident. She had spent days pouring over calculations of how much faster she’d have needed to swim to reach the surface in time and endured any number of sleepless nights by his bedside, thinking about the words she should have said and the signs she should have seen. Just like Fitz, it had been weeks before she’d realised that her looking backwards was never going to help him. And just like Fitz, Jemma also wished she’d only seen that sooner.

‘But in answer to your question,’ Fitz said, drawing Jemma’s attention back to him. ‘No, I wouldn’t change what I did.’

His eyes were shining with such a fierce earnest that it made her legs feel quite unsteady.

‘And if it ever came down to it, I’d do it all again a thousand times over.’

Jemma exhaled slightly, and gave him a single nod. No matter how many times she thought about it, the confirmation of how much he cared about her never failed to steal her breath away.

After a moment, Fitz licked his lips anxiously. ‘If…if _you_ could go back, if you could make a different choice…would you?’

_If you could go back, would you still choose me?_

And that, Jemma realised in that one single moment, was the core of the guilt that she’d been struggling with for the past three months.

All the time she had spent alone, staring at the walls and trying to find better solutions, had all been about puzzling out the choices she had made and the ones she could have made instead. She could have chosen not to free Dr Gardner and been killed by a Hydra bullet instead, and then not been waiting for Fitz when he came home for her. She could have chosen not to leave Will’s side on the alien planet, made her last stand against the inhuman creature and let Fitz slip through her fingertips for the last time. Thinking about each one of these alternative scenarios filled her with an all-consuming nausea, deeper than any her nightmares could bring on. While the concept of living with the guilt of what she’d done regularly threatened to overwhelm Jemma, the thought of living life without Fitz was simply unthinkable.

There had never been a choice for her to make, she understood now, not really. Because no matter what happened, she would always, _always_ , choose him.

‘No,’ Jemma whispered, and then realised she needed to shake her head she had spoken so softly. She turned her head back to Fitz, catching his gaze and holding it firmly, determined that he understand what she was trying to tell him. ‘No, I wouldn’t change anything either.’

Fitz swayed a little on his feet, as if he’d been expecting a different answer. Then, his mouth eased into a light smile. ‘Okay.’

Jemma nodded firmly. ‘Okay.’

Somehow, just by saying that simple word, it felt like the weight on her shoulders had become just a little bit lighter.

She had just been about to open her mouth again, suggesting that they continue their walk, when Fitz’s pocket between them started to vibrate violently. Even though her sensitivity to sudden noises had all but disappeared, Jemma found herself starting at the unexpectedness of the sound in the quiet corridor.

Fitz winced apologetically as he scrambled into his pocket for his phone. Jemma noticed that he used his opposite hand, so he didn’t have to let go of her.

‘I’m sorry, I should have turned it off…’

‘No, it’s fine,’ she said quickly, anxious that he should stop apologising. ‘Is that an alarm?’

‘Sort of.’ Fitz held his phone down, so they could both see it. ‘It’s an app that sends an alert when the sunrise is near. I’ve been watching a lot, these days.’  At the astonished look on her face, he shrugged with a wry smile. ‘What? If I’m awake anyway, I might as well go and watch something beautiful.’

Jemma couldn’t help but smile back, and her shoulders relaxed as she leant forward to touch his phone, scrolling through the app. In front of her, the screen declared that the next sunrise would be occurring in just under twenty five minutes.

‘So, what do you say?’ Fitz raised his head towards her, his eyes shining with a glimmer of hope. ‘Do you want to go watch it together?’

‘Yeah.’ Jemma nodded once, and then twice, more firmly. ‘Yeah, I really do.’

Linking their fingers together once more Fitz grinned, and when he gave a gentle tug to her hand, Jemma allowed herself to step forwards and follow him back through the base.

 

 

 

They ended up back at the window outside Coulson’s office, in the exact same spot where they’d watched their last sunrise together. The memory of that morning was so bittersweet that Jemma pushed it out of her mind before she could think about it too hard.

Fitz let go of her hand and moved towards the window, untying the string at the side so he could lift the blind to open them up to the world outside, allowing the sunlight to shine through the glass once it rose. Jemma hung back, hovering at the wall to watch him.

With his profile framed in the half-light before dawn, it was strange to see how much he had changed from the boy she had all but dragged onto the Bus after her two years ago. For one thing, Jemma noticed that she now thought of Fitz as a man in her mind, rather than a boy, and she wasn’t quite sure when she had begun making that distinction. She didn’t know what exactly had caused it to happen either, whether it had been the crisp button-down shirts he wore now or the way he was more inclined to want to protect her these days, rather than the other way around. If she was entirely honest with herself, it might quite simply have been the faint trail of stubble that drew her gaze down his cheekbones to rest at the corner of his mouth.

And yet for all Fitz had changed, Jemma knew that at his core he was still the same person he had always been: frustratingly stubborn, remarkably short-tempered and with the most incredible heart of anyone she had ever known.

It was this heart that she loved the most about him, no matter what he might think. His brain was wonderful, that was true, but it was also the part of him that he allowed anyone to see – in fact, he was outrageously offended when people _didn’t_ see it.

But his heart…that was different. His heart was something he kept close to his chest, allowing far fewer people to see it, and the privilege of being such an integral part of it was something Jemma was grateful for every day of her life. She could only hope that one day she would find the right words to sufficiently tell him how indispensable he was to _her_ heart too.

She would be an idiot though, if she allowed herself to think for one moment that the changes Fitz had undergone over the past two years had all been positive. The deep rings underneath his eyes were enough evidence of that alone, as was the paleness of his skin and the merest remnants of a tremor to his hand as he fastened up the window blind. Jemma felt her heart twinge when she realised how integral she had been to _that_ happening too.

‘What do you dream about?’

She found herself blurting out the question, one she had been harbouring ever since they’d left the mess room. Fitz looked up at her, the merest of alarm flashing across his face, before he straightened up and wiped his hands on his trousers.

‘What?’

‘You get up to play video games during the night,’ Jemma noted, ‘and you’re often awake to watch the sunrise. Usually, when someone can’t sleep, there’s a reason for it. I just assumed that yours was nightmares.’

 _Like mine_.

The last two words were unspoken, but they were as loud as if she had.

Fitz sniffed. ‘And you really can’t guess what my nightmares are?’

Jemma could guess alright. She was just hoping that he’d be able to prove her wrong.

She lifted one shoulder, in an indication that she’d rather hear it from him, and Fitz sighed.

‘It’s always about that night. Sometimes I can hear you screaming and even though I’ve said I’ll do what they want, I’ve said I’ll do whatever they want, you don’t stop. Other times, I’m back on the planet and I can see the portal closing in front of me, but it feels like I’m running through tar. I know I’m never going to make it in time and I’m going to be stuck there.’

He looked up and Jemma saw that his eyes were swimming with tears. ‘I guess we probably have that one in common now.’

All of a sudden, Jemma found that she felt rather woozy and she slumped back against the wall, feeling her head spin and her limbs grow heavy. Fitz frowned at her.

‘Jemma? Are you alright?’

‘I’m tired,’ she whispered, and realised only as she said it how true it really was.

Fitz blinked and took a step closer to her, one hand coming up to hover by her shoulder. ‘We don’t have to wait, you know. If you want, we can go sit down, or you can go back to bed…’

‘No.’ Jemma shook her head. They may have been running from their nightmares all night, but she still hadn’t run far enough to be sure they couldn’t catch her up if she stopped. ‘No. I don’t want to do that.’

Just like she had back outside the lab, Jemma felt an itch again, only this time it was ten times stronger. She held out her hand and when Fitz took it, she allowed the motion to pull her forwards into him.

Jemma felt Fitz’s breath catch in his throat as she stepped into him, her free hand coming up to rest lightly on his shoulder.

‘Dance with me?’ she asked, only distantly aware of how absurd the request was. She had never danced with Fitz before, and it was approaching six o’clock in the morning, but suddenly there was nothing she wanted more than to be held safely in his arms.

Fitz huffed out a quiet laugh, his cheeks flushing red. ‘Jemma, we…’

He came to a halt, and Jemma waited, counting the moments as he tried to scramble for a suitable excuse for why they shouldn’t do that, even if it might be something they both wanted.

Eventually, Fitz sighed. ‘We don’t have any music,’ he finished lamely.

In answer, Jemma stepped forward, closing the small space between them so she was pressed against his chest with her hand on his shoulder and her temples just brushing against his chin. Carefully, she lowered her head down to rest on his shoulder, tucking it into the gap below his neck where it fitted like the space there had been crafted just for her. With her head held against his shoulder, she could feel the jumps of his heart beating through his shirt.

She smiled, her face pressed into the nape of his neck.

‘What?’ Fitz asked, his hand coming up to rest lightly in the small of her back. ‘What is it?’

Jemma shook her head, taking the moment to savour the sound and the quiet assurance of the only rhythm she had ever needed to hear.

‘I can hear your heartbeat.’

She twisted her head upwards and felt herself suck in a breath when she saw how he was looking at her. His eyes were soft, and while they might have been ringed with sleep, they were still filled with the gentlest love Jemma had ever seen.

She squeezed lightly at his hand and asked again.

‘Dance with me?’

This time, Fitz didn’t protest. His hand at her back splayed, allowing his fingers to spread across the soft cotton of her top, steadying her. They began to sway together, moving slowly in a half-moon through the narrow corridor, the near-dawn bathing them both in a pale yellow light. Jemma inhaled, allowing herself to breathe in the warm, heady scent of his skin, so familiar it felt like home.

Fitz led in the traditional sense, rocking them back and forth and keeping their hands held together, but it was Jemma who guided them, using the beat of his heart to set the rhythm of their dance. It became a balancing act, a perfect equilibrium of their minds working together, knowing where the other was going to lean before they’d even known themselves. The unison of their thoughts dictated the synchronisation of their bodies, in a manner utterly reminiscent of all the years they had spent by each other’s sides.

Jemma felt tears prickle at the back of her eyes.

‘I’m sorry.’

On top of her head, Fitz’s jaw clenched. ‘Stop that. There’s nothing you need to apologise to me for.’

‘But I feel like there is though.’ The back of Jemma’s throat felt tight. ‘I feel…I feel like I should always be apologising to you. To everyone, really.’

‘Stop.’ Fitz’s hand on her back tensed and Jemma got the impression that he’d have pulled her even closer to him if it had been possible. ‘Stop it. You don’t have to apologise to me, not to anyone. You don’t…you don’t owe me anything.’

‘I can’t help it. I feel…I feel like I’m a fault line. I’m a geological fault running right the way across the earth. I’m falling apart and any time somebody comes too close to me, they crumble too. And it’s all my fault.’

Her words hung in the air between them, heavy with a raw honesty Jemma had always found it difficult to give. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to stop her tears from falling onto her cheeks, which only became more difficult when she felt Fitz’s thumb start to rub comfortingly at her back.

‘You know, Simmons,’ he said after a moment, his voice purposefully light and his words spoken in a manner that might have been teasing if they weren’t so tender. ‘I have to admit I’m a little surprised at you. I know you’ve been a little preoccupied these past few months, but that’s certainly no reason for you to abandon the basic principles of geology entirely.’

He swayed them again, and his head dropped down to rest against hers, the bristles of his hair rubbing at her forehead, and when he spoke again, his voice was soft.

‘It’s not the fault lines that cause things to crumble. It’s the rest of the world, for making the fault lines hold up too much.’

Jemma let out a breath she hadn’t known she was holding, and twisted her face so it was pressed into his neck. She felt the tears, hot and heavy, start to leak out from the corners of her eyes and she sniffed, twining her fingers into the fabric of his shirt as if she could anchor herself to him and never let go.

‘You…you do know how important you are to me, don’t you?’

For a single heartbeat, Fitz went still before he nodded against her, his hand patting carefully at her back. ‘Yeah. Thank you.’

‘But you do understand? You understand that…that you’re the most important person to me – that you are my favourite person, my best person, my…’ Her voice wavered. ‘You’re more important than anyone has ever been to me.’

‘I _know_ , Jemma.’ Fitz’s nose was pressed into her hairline, and she was dimly aware of how cold he was. ‘It’s okay.’

‘And you know how people say, when somebody is that important to them, that they…they mean the world to them?’ He nodded again, and Jemma sucked in a deep breath. ‘Well, that’s not enough. That’s never been enough, really, to describe what you mean to me, Fitz.’

The corridor was silent again, as the two of them continued to spin in their small circles with their heads and hearts pressed so close together they could have been one being. Jemma waited, counting his heartbeats and the words that she wanted to say, just so she could be sure that she’d said them right.

‘You…you mean _all_ the worlds to me.’

Fitz didn’t say anything. He didn’t really need to, not this time. Instead, he just turned his head and pressed a gentle kiss to her temple, letting his lips linger at her skin for just a moment longer than absolutely necessary. Then he continued to dance them, his feet taking hold of the rhythm of their hearts at last, and Jemma allowed herself to close her eyes again.

She could have kept going, she knew that. It would have taken remarkably little effort on her part to push herself upwards and catch his lips with hers, allowing herself to kiss him just the same as they had done in the lab all those months ago. Jemma felt something stir inside her as she remembered the feel of those kisses, and all the unspoken love that had been poured into them. But then, she remembered the desperation that had been there too and the pain, so much pain, too much of it also gone unspoken.

There would be a time for that again, Jemma promised to herself. A time when neither of them carried so much pain and when they weren’t so desperately afraid of losing one another.

That time would come, when her heart wasn’t quite so heavy and the rings around Fitz’s eyes weren’t quite so deep, and when it did Jemma knew that she would be ready. But that time wasn’t tonight. And somehow, Jemma understood that that was okay.

For tonight, this was enough.

She sighed, a small exhalation of relief, and burrowed her face further into his neck as a slight smile spread across her face. Her movements were starting to slow, and she could feel her head dropping further down Fitz’s chest, as if it knew the place it belonged was in his heart.

‘Jemma?’

‘Hmm?’

‘Hey.’

Fitz squeezed gently at her hand, turning them slightly so that Jemma could feel the warmth from the window reflecting back onto her face.

‘Don’t go to sleep before the sun rises.’

Jemma opened her eyes, just in time to watch the thin fingers of light reach over the horizon and through the glass window, filling the narrow corridor with the brilliant, golden light of the sunrise.

‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Never.’

 

 


End file.
